The rocky road from Bali
Sean McDonagh
At the end of the Bali Conference Yvo de Boer, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention Conference on Climate Change (UNFCCC) said, "This is a real breakthrough, a real opportunity for the international community to successfully fight climate change." I believe that Secretary Yvo de Boer was being overly optimistic: little of substance was achieved at Bali.
The build-up to the Bali conference was significant. Last year began with the publication of the Fourth Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The message was stark: unless greenhouse-gas emissions (GGE) were seriously curtailed, the human community and the wider global environment, faced a bleak future.
It could expect devastating heatwaves, floods, droughts, storms, and forest fires which would cause death and displacement for hundreds of millions of people. Warmer global temperatures would have a negative impact on agricultural production, leading to hunger and malnutrition. 
A rise of between one and two degrees celsius could cause the extinction of one third of the species on Earth, leaving future generations with a polluted and impoverished planet.
The IPCC was adamant that, in order to keep the rise in mean global temperature below two degrees celsius, major cuts had to be made immediately in greenhouse gas emissions.
For rich countries the target was set at a reduction of between 25% and 40% on 1990 levels by the year 2020. If the rich countries grasped this nettle, which the EU was willing to do, then the expectation was that the G7 countries, made up of developing countries led by India and China, would also begin making mandatory cuts. These countries were adamant, however, that the West had to jump first.
What happened
The US delegation was not willing to accept binding cuts in any shape or form. This obstinacy by the US delegation continued throughout the Conference, ably supported by Canada and, to a lesser extent, Japan. The famous breakthrough on the last night "only amounted to a promise" by the US to participate in on-going negotiations.
The second goal set for Bali was to establish a legally binding Adaptation Protocol to support poor countries which are being affected by climate change. Under Kyoto, adaptation funds were raised on a voluntary basis from a 2% levy generated on carbon trading projects. The UNFCCC announced at Bali that the Fund needed $40 billion to finance adaptation. The current value of the fund is £36 million.
The air of unreality about transferring low carbon technology from rich to poor countries was captured by Bjorn Sigson, from the World Business Council for Sustainability. He reminded his audience that technologies are owned by the private sector, and therefore the government could not transfer them. This exposed a major flaw in the plan to use CDMs in combating climate change while, at the same time, allowing poor countries to leap-frog from being carbon-dependent economies to being low-carbon ones.
Prospects for the future
The road from Bali to Copenhagen (2009) will be rocky. There are no guarantees that a successful, comprehensive treaty, embodying serious cuts in GGE will be concluded by 2009. Negotiators can expect little support from the Bush Administration during 2008. In the light of this obduracy all eyes will be on the Presidential election in November 2008.
Since there is always a time-lag between administrations, environmental groups, and possibly Churches, will have to work hard to push the issue of climate change to the top of the political agenda.
Fr Sean McDonagh attended the United Nations Climate Change Conference.
